Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.
Interpretation
Pursuing truth passionately can lead to personal liberation, even if you never fully grasp it.
In this quote, Clarence Darrow emphasizes the importance of passionately seeking the truth. The journey itself towards understanding and uncovering truth can lead to personal freedom and enlightenment, even if the complete truth remains elusive, suggesting that the act of searching is valuable in itself.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the importance of seeking knowledge.
With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.
Do I need to argue to Your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love, and understanding?
Chase after the truth like all hell.
No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
The trouble with law is lawyers.
Don't be different just for different's sake. If you see it differently, function that way. Follow your own muse, always.
Since you are the one who has to live with your choices, be sure they are your own.
When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds for him - the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. Yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage.
We need to learn to let go as easily as we grasp and we will find our hands full and our minds empty.
The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.
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